World Wide Web User Profiles by Geographic Region

by Erik Granered

From the Non-USA Dataset of GVU's 3rd WWW User Survey

The following material may be freely copied and reproduced, subject
to some conditions
.

Source: WWW User Profiles by Geographic Region by Erik Granered

Acknowledgment

Sincere thanks are extended to Jim Pitkow of the GVU WWW Survey
team for compiling and making the Non-USA dataset available to
me. Without his quick and competent responses to my e-mail inquiries,
this study would never have taken place.

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The tab-delineated, ascii text dataset of non-US respondents to
the GVU 3rd WWW User Survey was downloaded from the GVU FTP site
at <ftp.gatech.cc.edu>. The data was loaded on a PC and
processed in Microsoft Excel 5.0, Microsoft Access 2.0, and Microsoft
Word For Windows 6.0. The geographic subsets were created in Microsoft
Access. The queries for each individual question were conducted
in Access using Query Wizard's "find duplicates" function.
The results of these queries were then moved to Excel for additional
analysis and graphics work. The final graphs were exported to
Word for Windows, where the text was added.

The GVU Survey home page elaborates on two sets of limitations,
self-selection and non-probabilistic sampling. The language barrier
must be considered a contributing factor to self-selection process.
The high number of responses from other English-speaking countries
such as Australia (236) and Canada (692) may not only indicate
that these countries have a high degree of connectivity, but that
language in fact facilitated the decision to take the survey.

The small number of responses from regions such as Latin America
and the Middle East does not necessarily indicate that these responses
are not representative samples of World Wide Web users in these
areas as Internet connectivity is not as advanced there as in
Western countries.

1. The Non-USA Dataset

There were 147 responses from Asia. These responses came from
Hong Kong (21), India (3), Japan (27), Malaysia (4), Singapore
(59), South Korea (10), Taiwan (5), Thailand (2) and other (12).
The average age of the respondents was 31.

There were 1,273 responses from Europe, by far the largest number
of responses outside the United States. These responses came from
Austria (28), Belgium (35), Croatia (35), Czech Republic (2),
Denmark (29), Estonia (2), Finland (66), France (60), Germany
(111), Greece (3), Iceland (14), Ireland (20), Italy (49), Netherlands
(88), Norway (51), Poland (4), Portugal (5), Russia (4), Spain
(10), Sweden (85), Switzerland (60), United Kingdom (495), other
(15). It is noteworthy to point out that the responses from the
United Kingdom made up 39 percent of the European dataset, and
3.8 percent of the total, fourth after California, New York and
Texas. The average age of the European respondents was 31.

There were only 53 responses from Latin America. Fifty percent
of these responses were from Mexico (24), followed by Brazil (9),
Chile (5), Colombia (3), Costa Rica (3), and other(4). The average
age was 30, the lowest of all the geographic regions.

8. Responses from South Africa and Antarctica were not handled
in this study.

As a group, non-US World Wide Web users are male, highly educated,
with high incomes and with plenty of computer experience. Many
are married and have children. This sophistication probably reflects
the relatively high entry barriers that still exist in becoming
familiar with the Internet. Commercial vendors such as America
Online and CompuServe have lowered these entry barriers, but non-US
respondents do not yet use these commercial services, be it for
reasons of access or cost.

Non-US World Wide Web users are predominantly white. The only
substantial non-white communities could be found in Latin America
(71 percent Spanish) and Asia (66 percent Asian). In both these
regions, the percentage of white respondents was surprisingly
large at about 28 percent.

The commercial Internet user-revolution that is taking place
in the US is reflected among non-US World Wide Web Users as well.
While educators, students and computer professionals still dominate,
there are substantial groups of "professionals, managers
and other" in all of the geographic regions.

Most respondents indicate that their willingness to pay for
access to World Wide Web sites and databases would depend on cost
and quality. This shows that they are at least open-minded to
the possibility of paying if the information is good and reasonably
priced. This survey did not contain any information regarding
people's willingness to use a credit card to pay for the information.

Most respondents do not use their computers as a recreational
tool. While most users do play with their computers to some extent,
few do so more than 10 hours per week.

There is a relationship between regional connectivity and
Internet experience within each region. For example, Europeans
and Australians have more Internet experience than Latin Americans
and Asians.

Perhaps the most surprising result of this survey is the extent
to which Mozilla dominates as a Browser among non-US World Wide
Web users. With all other browsers represented in most of the
regions, none of them get even close to Mozilla, which enjoys
a market share of 85 percent overall.